There is so far known an optical disk on which audio signals such as voice or musical sounds are recorded in digitized form, or so-called compact disk. A player adapted for reproducing the compact disk is usually endowed with a program reproducing function and adapted to reproduce selected ones of the tunes recorded on the disk in the desired sequence. There is also known a player in which the program information for each of a plurality of disks is stored in a memory from which the memory contents are not erased even when the power source is turned off (non-volatile memory) and in which the disk is automatically discriminated and the corresponding program information selected in dependence upon the contents of the table of contents information (TOC information) indicating the record contents to effect program reproduction.
It is noted that the above TOC information is recorded in the lead-in region on the inner peripheral side of the recording region or program area on the disk reserved for recording the play information etc.
While the compact disk is dedicated to reproduction, there is a demand for a disk system which is recordable and which is adapted to maintain compatibility with respect to the compact disk. As an example, a system is proposed which makes use of a magneto-optical disk, it being possible with the disk recording/reproducing apparatus for such system to provide the aforementioned program reproducing function. However, there is a limit to the memory in the recording/reproducing apparatus and to the number of the programs that can be stored. In addition, when the reproduction is to be performed in other apparatus, the same program cannot be reproduced unless the operation of preparing a program is performed again.
The present invention has been proposed in view of the above inconveniences and is aimed to provide a disk recording/reproducing apparatus and a disk recording/reproducing method whereby program reproduction may be easily performed from a large number of disks without employing a memory of larger capacity. The present invention is also aimed to provide a disk recording/reproduction apparatus and a disk recording/reproducing method in which the same program can be reproduced on other apparatus without the necessity of newly performing a program forming operation.